TOPIC: 'Howdy', from Texas

My name is Brett and I live in Austin, Texas. I bought a set of Garvie border pipes quite some time ago, but never spent much time with them. I played with the Silver Thistle pipes and drums for a few years and learned a lot . Great bunch of pipers with some excellent teachers and opportunities for people wanting to get into piping and drumming. I became attracted to the less regimental types of piping and pulled my border pipes out and was so happy I had kept them! Funny how some of the recent topics have reflected exactly this subject! I actually am thinking about rejoining Silver Thistle, but am really going to concentrate on my border pipes!

My highland pipes are rarely out of the box these days but it's a rare day indeed when the border pipes aren't.

It's fantastic after all these years to be able to play an instrument as liberating as the border pipe is becoming for me (now I'm starting to get the bellows and finger spacing properly nailed down). I wouldn't have been able to do it without my background in highland piping though. There's no way on earth I'd have learnt from a book what I take for granted now and equally stuck in the center of England as I am there is no one roundabouts to turn to for lessons either.

The pipe scene over the pond there seems to have gone huge in the last couple of decades and I don't think that can be a bad thing really. Equally though I don't think that music should be a competitive sport especially not to the degree that it appears to have become. It may push on some of the technical skill in playing but it can kill stone dead any enjoyment and nuance in performance.

I remember very clearly many an argument and conversation with the glitterati of the RSPBA and band scene. Once asked where I played I said I play just for fun, "I don't, I play to win" was the reply. Sad really, he was a member of Boghall and Bathgate Pipe band, they hadn't even won the wooden spoon in a decade!